India‘s Development Policy: Role of Innovation & Technology

The Government of India announced 2010-2020 decade as the "Decade of Innovation”. In this paper the authors study how technology and innovations have drastically flipped the market by providing tough competition among the producers, thus enabling them to sell high quality products at low price. The current level of research and development (R&D) expenditure is less than one percent of the GDP. According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2017-18, country’s innovation capacity has been lower than many other countries like South Korea and USA, UK but it is better than China. The authors have made an attempt to study various challenges being faced by the entrepreneurs while innovating, the advantages and limitations of technology, the level and composition of research and development expenditure in the country and many initiatives being undertaken by the Government basis which suggestions have been made to enrich the Innovation ecosystem further in the country. The authors suggest policy makers to focus on transforming country’s Innovation ecosystem by introducing a New Innovation Policy to enhance R&D investment into high-tech and efficient technologies and building appropriate institutions and infrastructure. Education system needs to be made more conducive and oriented toward entrepreneurship and innovation. Infrastructure facilities such as electricity, internet in villages need improvement. An increased level of awareness, expertise assistance to entrepreneurs for protection of intellectual property rights will induce more and more entrepreneurs to go for innovation and patents. Government should focus on tapping Global Innovation hotspots in new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Robotics etc. Country should focus on targeting productive outcome driven R&D in the Government Sector, ensuring more favorable infrastructure and policy to increase the share of private sector R&D in India and increase the level of research and development expenditure in the country to achieve the target rate of two percent which will further contribute to a higher level of economic growth rate. Further, they should create an entrepreneurial and innovation conducive system for holistic progress and technological advancement ensuring sustainable development.